Patent EP 2 289 823 in the name of Tecnau Srl and Rotomail Italy Spa discloses a system for manufacturing books with a binder that uses book blocks and covers of different dimensional characteristics. In a respective embodiment, the covers are printed in sequence, as cover sheets, on a cover strip wound on a spool. The cover sheets are separated from an unwinding strip to form the covers, which are successively assembled with the associated book blocks. Such system operates with spools for the book blocks and spools for the covers, which are printed by specialized printing systems and ensures great flexibility to the editorial requirements, with high operating speed and limited cost.
A system for manufacturing books on demand with plasticizing of the covers has been described in the U.S. Pat. No. 6,986,630. This system comprises a printer for book blocks, a printer for the covers with a plasticizing device and a binder for assembling the covers with the associated book blocks. The plasticizing device applies two plasticizing films on the two faces of the covers, in response to a request of cover by the binder. The films are unwound from two film spools, separated from the spools and applied to the covers along a path from the cover printer to an input of the binder. The process is controlled on the basis of a program and indications from a sensor which detects the passages of a leading edge and a trailing edge of the covers. No particular procedure is disclosed for the substitution of the plasticizing films. Therefore, in a system of this type, for obtaining covers having different typologies of plasticization, a manual substitution of the plasticizing films would be required in accordance with the specific publishing requests, and necessarily high replacement times.
In the system of the cited patent EP 2 289 823, for manufacturing books with plasticized covers, the cover sheets must be separated from a cover strip or cover sheets which have been previously plasticized with the desired typology. Therefore, the processing of different types of plasticized covers and non-plasticized covers requires the provision of different plasticizing lines and the manual replacement of the covers spools, with a consequent increase of costs and processing times.